Ode to Decolonised Education

[Philip Copeman]

Ode to Decolonized Education                                         (In lyrical Elizabethan Sonnet form)

India colonised european minds                                       (synecdote)
They gave us algebra, counting absurd.                           (antithesis, pun)
Given zero, empires started to gird,                                 (oxymoron, metonomy)
Commerce soon followed and oversea finds.                    (personification, enallage)

England colonised our faire azania                                   (anaphora, irony)
Boys play straight cricket and crooken straight ties,         (hyperbaton, paradox, antanaclasis)
Fathers wear suits, while our mothers bake pies.              (satire)
Go-girls, girls-go, banyan-abanyana                               (epistrophe)

Africans colonised america                                               (euphemism, sarcasm)  
They bark'd in big boats, in charming choke chains         (antimeria, innuendo, alliteration, transferred epithet)
And brought freedom's rythms, masking their pains.       (enjamberment, conceit, metaphor)  
No back beats no drums, a numerica...                            (litotes, malapropism, ellipsis)

Those who lament the demise of the tribes?                     (rhetorical question, sibilance, hyperbole)
Listen to jazz, double bass, ringing vibes.                         (rhyming couplet, onomatopoeia, homophone)